cities

COMMUNITY-BASED PLANNING: Strengthening citizen participation
A study by the Khanya-African Institute of Community‐Driven Development (Khanya-aicdd)
in partnership with SACN looked at how community-based planning (CBP) has strengthened
citizen participation in cities across the African continent.
CBP emerged in South Africa before spreading to other regions, and its aim is to make
development more relevant to local priorities, empowering local communities in the
development process, and deepening democracy. The different participatory planning
approaches used in various politico-administrative contexts were examined. Experiences
from South Africa, Ghana, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Kenya were used to
improve, innovate and develop CBP as a best practice tool for participatory planning.
Participatory planning tools rely heavily on the politico-administrative structures to incorporate
and implement community priorities, and on the ability of communities to drive development
processes. Such processes can transform governance systems, allowing for active engagement
with citizens and strengthening government’s accountability, efficiency and responsiveness.
With the proliferation of decentralised governance systems across the continent, different
decentralisation models are adopted, and public participation is not necessarily dependent on
political or administrative decentralisation.
An appropriate enabling environment is a key factor for participatory planning. Almost all
the countries studied have public participation legislation and policies in place. However, in
some instances (e.g. Ghana), incoherence, duplication and uncertainty have prevented the
policies from being translated into real and meaningful engagements. In other instances (e.g.
Zimbabwe), a lack of political will means that efforts have remained at very embryonic levels.
The presence of institutionalised and clear planning frameworks and processes determine
the levels of public participation. Public participation is potentially enhanced if the processes
are obligatory and defined (as in Uganda and Nigeria), but very limited if they are undefined
(as in Ghana and Zimbabwe). The degree of citizen engagement ranges from basic consultation
on externally derived plans (in Ghana) to ongoing monitoring and evaluation of plans
developed in participatory processes (in Nigeria).
A conducive environment for public participation needs civil servants who understand and
can implement the appropriate policies, frameworks and tools, but this capacity is not being
systematically built in any of the countries studied. In South Africa, no national capacity
development plan or standards exist. Efforts have been made to orient and capacitate
frontline staff and planners in CBP, but municipalities and line departments run training
programmes in isolation and often in parallel.
The success of these processes also depend on the extent of public participation in financial
matters, which varies. In some instances, local people are involved in developing budgets (e.g.
Ethiopia, and Nigeria), whereas in other instances (e.g. South Africa) the lack of budgetary
commitment to community plans has frustrated community engagement processes. The
process itself is often unsustainable if it relies on external finance (as with Social Accountability
216 State of South African Cities Report 2016